[ATDrake]

Finished Arnaldur Indriðason's Jar City (aka Tainted Blood, according to the alternate-titling-notice sticker on the front of the library's copy), actually 3rd in his series starring Erlendur Sveinsson, Intrepid World-Weary Middle-Aged Icelandic Detective, but the 1st to become available in English (apparently the first two books remain untranslated because by the author's own admission, they aren't very good).

This is apparently an extremely popular series, both in its native Iceland and abroad (now up to 11 books out of 14 translated, and many English-language award-nominees, according to SYKM), but I initially found it slow-going, what with its obligatory mildly dysfunctional gloomy protagonist with a highly dysfunctional home life, and what seemed to be a somewhat meandering investigation leading to a fairly ordinary wronged-in-the-past revenge killing whodunnit.

It turns out that I was pleasantly mistaken about that, and this actually tied things together in a way that made use of a particular unique feature of modern Iceland to provide the means and motivation in a fairly novel way. It's easy to see how this series could have gone on to win prizes, and while I still think this particular volume takes a while to get into, I can give it a tentative recommend as a solid start, and look forward to trying out the rest.

Also finished Joakim Zander's The Swimmer and The Brother, 1st & 2nd in a series of political thrillers not so much starring as occasionally featuring Klara Walldéen, Intrepid Plucky Orphaned Expat Swedish Political Aide. These are very topical, ripped-from-the-headlines sorts of thrillers which address counter-terrorism and globalization issues such as information leaks and the outsourcing of interrogations to deniable third-parties, the recruitment of disaffected youth into radical movements, the cynical exploitation of manufactured chaos to consolidate control, etc., and how they can wind up affecting people on a very personal level, as well as being matters of policy.

Apparently these are multilingual bestsellers, and it's easy to see why. The author's bio-blurb says that he's lived in Israel and Syria and worked for the European Parliament (as Klara herself does, initially), and he treats the various individuals caught up in the machinery with a great deal of sympathy and a certain amount of nuance in a very shades-of-grey world, where the supposedly good guys sometimes resort to unforgiveable measures with flimsy justification and even the obvious bad guys have their logical-if-mistaken reasons for doing the wrong thing.

Recommended if you're interested in topical political thrillers written from a possibly uncommon perspective. I liked these more than I was expecting to (mind you, I was expecting them to be shallower melodramatic action rides with backstabbing betrayals and long-buried secrets revealed, and they do still have those moments in addition to the unexpected depth) and am interested in seeing where he next goes with the series. I'm also pretty pleased that what I thought would be a one-off character who got written off at the end of the 1st book shows up again to play a supporting role in the 2nd. They were another thing I ended up liking more than I was expecting to based on their initial appearance, with fairly surprising but not unwelcome character growth, and I hope they show up again.